Yugoslav leaders locked in power struggle

Balkan mobsters return to play influential role

August 29, 2001|By Tom Hundley, Tribune foreign correspondent.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Earlier this month, Momir Gavrilovic, a shadowy ex-operative in the Serbian secret police, delivered a classified report on organized crime to members of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica's Cabinet. The report apparently detailed links between mobsters and top police officials.

Five hours later, Gavrilovic was dead, gunned down gangland-style on the sidewalk outside his apartment as he returned home with a bag of groceries.

During the days of Slobodan Milosevic's thugocracy, when the boundaries between the government and the criminal underworld were almost non-existent, such killings were routine.

But many people hoped that with Milosevic gone, those days were past. The Gavrilovic killing showed they are not.

The killing underscored the widening breach between Kostunica, the dour constitutional lawyer who came out of nowhere to defeat Milosevic at the polls last September, and Zoran Djindjic, the slick prime minister of Serbia, who has emerged as the country's most powerful political figure.

After the Gavrilovic killing, Kostunica pulled his party's ministers out of Djindjic's coalition government, saying the government had done little to tackle the country's crime problem. Djindjic, known to be friendly with some of Serbia's shadier businessmen, took the criticism personally.

Different styles

In style and temperament, the two rivals are opposites. Kostunica is cautious, legalistic, dull and considered incorruptible. He also is a fervent nationalist who refers to Serbs as "us" and ethnic Albanians as "terrorists." His behavior suggests he dislikes the United States.

Djindjic, on the other hand, is a man of mysterious contradictions. The urbane, left-leaning politician with a doctorate in philosophy from Germany's Heidelberg University is polishing his English and likes Americans. He also likes to run around Belgrade in a convoy of black, bulletproof Range Rovers with a phalanx of bodyguards. Often it is hard to distinguish Djindjic from the bodyguards; they're all wearing the same sharp Armani suits over black T-shirts.

Questions have been raised about his ties to the country's crime lords. Recent newspaper reports say Djindjic on several occasions accepted rides in the private airplane of a businessman famous for his dealings in black market cigarettes.

Djindjic's Democratic Party is the largest and best organized of the 18 parties that came together last year to form the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), which ultimately ousted Milosevic.

But after nearly nine months in power, Djindjic has not been able to win the trust or affection of Serb voters. In opinion surveys, he consistently scores very high negatives and very low positives.

Kostunica, meanwhile, has seen his popularity soar and his party grow steadily. The problem is that the presidency of Yugoslavia is mainly symbolic and carries little real power. And if Montenegro, the junior partner to Serbia in what remains of the Yugoslav federation, decides to pull out, there won't be a Yugoslavia for Kostunica to lead.

Who wields influence?

Real power in Yugoslavia, most analysts agree, is wielded by Djindjic.

This was amply demonstrated in June when Djindjic rode roughshod over legal and constitutional issues to deliver Milosevic to the Hague war crimes tribunal in time to earn a pledge for $1.28 billion in reconstruction aid, including $181.6 million in U.S. loans and grants.

Kostunica, who opposed the extradition, is still fuming. "A gross violation of our constitution and law," was how he characterized it last week.

Laslo Sekelj, an analyst at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade, said, "Forget the personal dimension of their rivalry. What's important is the two competing visions of politics."

"Kostunica represents the view that rule of law is of primary importance," Sekelj said.

"Djindjic is running the government the same way he runs his party and the same way he would run a private enterprise. He doesn't care too much about laws. . . . He's careless about who his friends are," he said.

Sekelj said the West likes Djindjic "because they push a button and he does what they want." But he says over the long run the interests of Yugoslavia and Europe are better served by Kostunica's principled efforts to rebuild the rule of law.

Some analysts say real power in Yugoslavia is not held by any politician, but by the criminal organizations that range freely across borders in the Balkans.

"Because of economic sanctions from the West, our whole society has been criminalized," said Predrag Markovic, a political analyst in Belgrade.

"I'm trying not to sound like a victim here, but if you turn an entire nation into an outcast, if you make it a crime for us to buy gasoline, what you get is the criminalization of the state. . . . The years of sanctions have created a black hole in central Europe that will take generations to repair."

Gangs run free

Much of the trouble in Yugoslavia is caused by the remnants of paramilitary gangs that specialized in sanctions-busting and "ethnic cleansing" during the war and now are scrambling to find new fields of endeavor.

The latest permutation in the escalating competition among Belgrade's crime gangs is kidnapping each other's members for ransom. Police sources say at least 20 people are being held for ransom in so-called private prisons operated by the gangs.

Many current and former officials in the secret police, including Gavrilovic, are suspected of having links to these activities.

To counter Kostunica's accusations that the government has done little to crack down on organized crime, the Serbian Interior Ministry is offering a reward of $140,000 for information leading to the arrest of perpetrators of 22 high-profile murders committed during the Milosevic era that remain unsolved.